Oregon leading scorer Joevan Catron, always a bundle of energy and now more so since he's ready to play against Oregon State, says the Ducks badly need a win Saturday.

"We don’t want to hear about losing to no Beavers for the rest of the season,'' said Catron as the 334th Civil War approaches.

The Oregon teams are the only two in the Pacific-10 Conference on the wrong side of .500 in overall record, but there's the feeling that this game has a little more importance than the usual rivalry game.

The Ducks (8-10, 1-5 Pac-10) need a win in Corvallis before hitting the road for a couple of games against Stanford and California - teams that are beatable but hard to beat in their gyms.

The Beavers, newly athletic and up-tempo, need to translate some of that energy into victories as they are knocking on the door of the Pac-10's upper echelon - their knocks muffled by some strange non-league losses.

Oregon State swept the Civil Wars last season and has beaten Oregon 183 times. Coach Dana Altman said he's starting to learn about his whole phenomenon, but the Civil War hoopla probably ranks somewhere around the new floor on his list of concerns right now - it matters a lot to a lot of people, but he has matters of a lot more pressing importance.

"We've competed at times," Altman said of his first season so far. "We haven't had the wins (and) we haven't finished games the way we want."

Catron, averaging 15.9 points and 6.4 rebounds, said Altman's system has been "great for me,'' but his enjoyment has been tempered by the struggles of the team, which ranks last in the Pac-10 and 284th in the nation in field goal percentage (40.7 percent).

"Me personally I’m having a lot of fun, but I’d like to have more wins,'' Catron said. "We’ve shown bits and pieces of where we can go and how good we can be.''

E.J. Singler, who has a famous brother playing on the other side of the country and also a cousin (Mitch) playing football at Oregon State, said he knows this game means more than just a chance to get a needed win.

"It's bigger - it’s a rivalry game,'' Singler said. "I know this means a lot to a lot of Oregon fans, a lot of Oregon State fans. This means a lot to a lot of Oregon people.''

The Ducks will have to make some shots, obviously, but just getting shots off has proven difficult against Oregon State, which leads the nation in steals. The Beavers are on pace to set a school steals record - better than the havoc-wreaking teams of Gary Payton in the late '80s.

Here are scouting reports on a couple of incoming guards in next year's class for Oregon: Bruce Barron and Brett Kingma. The gist: Barron is a project but a tough point, and Kingma is lights out from three.